The "Insights Sitting at The Bar" How-to Guide
The Five Steps to Gather Insights in Bars by Yourself (Instead of Waiting For an Invitation From your Sales Team That Will Never Come).
Dear Drinks Builder,
In the drinks industry, there’s a problem. People tend to spend more time in the office than in the market. This is quite counterintuitive for an industry that prides itself on being a people business. It creates an echo chamber that provides biased feedback while building the brand.
Most people I speak to (small or big brands) are uncomfortable visiting the on-trade to sell.
There is a tendency to overfocus on the internal aspects of brand building—creating the brand, perfecting the liquid, the look of the bottle, and the marketing stuff. There’s so much effort in these aspects that people think their brand is so great that it will sell alone.
When it doesn’t happen, there’s a cold shower effect. Very few people in the industry understand the importance of cracking sales and distribution.
Last week, in one of my LinkedIn posts, someone asked me a question. Why didn’t I mention “the brand” as one of the top 3 factors to win in the market? It’s simple: the brand has become only table stakes. It’s like trying to get hired for a job because you can use emails, work with MS Office, or speak English as a second language. Those things are not mentioned anymore in CVs. They were often enough 20 years ago. Not anymore. Two decades ago, it was also enough for a brand to be excellent, do great marketing, and have a great liquid. Now, they need to master sales and distribution.
A strong brand is necessary but not sufficient condition to get listed, displayed in a back bar or picked up from a shelf.
The future of drinks industry insights is sitting at the bar.
Selling a product is hard. You’ll get more doors on your face and negative answers than you can imagine. But that's not a good enough reason to give that task to someone else in your team.
Founders hire a salesperson who “knows the market and has contacts.” Marketing teams delegate selling to their sales colleagues.
It’s not by running focus groups and talking with influencers that you understand the market. They will mostly give you obvious answers to biased questions.
It’s not by speaking to random target consumers who think like you that you make a bullet-proof brand. It’s by getting a “no” to your sell-in story and a "so what" to your brand story. It’s by talking to bartenders and observing consumer behaviors.
Great brands are not built in the echo chamber. By talking to your colleagues and inner circle, you will get the answers you wanna hear, not what you need to hear.
I've heard marketing colleagues complaining they hadn't been "invited" by sales to a market visit. Bars are not dangerous places; you can only enter them after a SWAT sales team has cleared them.
Bar owners are ordinary people. They may be flamboyant, true. If they act too cool, you're in the wrong place, or maybe you don't have the answers to argue back.
So, what's the best way to gather insights effectively? I don't have a silver bullet, but here are five tips to consider:
Tip #1: Spend more time in the market
Spending time in-house is important, but it's a given. If you don't understand the market, you will pile up pallets of bottles in your warehouse.
I once heard that the main thing to building a drink brand is having good shoes. Spend time on the streets and understand the needs of distributors, sales reps, and bar owners. It's an ecosystem; you must master the levers to make it work smoothly.
You can't delegate sales. You need to be in the streets every week (if not every day), not just when you have time. It's like going to the gym. If you don't make time for it, you will never get there (that's me).
Tip #2: Speak to the bar and wait staff.
Bartenders are busy, but they are still human. Talk to them. Off-peak hours are the best for this. Go there on a slow afternoon or early evening.
Have a drink and observe how the staff recommends brands. Ask them questions and observe non-verbal actions.
What can you do to make their job easier? Make your brand part of that journey.
Your brand is part of the Drinks Ecosystem movie. Start with a side role; don’t rush to be a protagonist.
Tip #3: Observe how people behave in bars.
Visit bars at different times and days, busy nights ≠ slow nights.
See how people order drinks. What do they ask? Do they order from the menu or by looking at the back bar? How do they ask for a recommendation from the bartender? Do they focus on flavor or category?
Adapt your sell-in story to a language consumers can understand. Keep it simple and stupid so they can remember it.
Tip #4: Go to normal bars, not (only) to the 50 best bars.
If you want your brand to scale, 99% of the bars to which you will sell will be normal bars. You should realize that most of what you see in the world's top bars will stay there.
Not all trends will drip down to average bars. You should focus on regular bars where ordinary people go, not only where influencers hang out. Bartenders familiar with working with big brands understand your geeky language. Regular bartenders don't. Make it understandable to an average person.
Tip #5: Spend time with salespeople.
Understand how they sell—your internal team and the distributors’ and wholesalers' teams. Remember that 99% of your sales come from people outside your organization. They will forget you if they don't understand why and how to sell your brand. Make sure your brand solves their and their customers' needs.
Brands are built bottom-up.
I hope this mini-guide will help you develop the small, consistent habits you need to build your brand from the ground up.
Whenever you're ready, there are more ways I can help you:
My Digital Course: If you need help TODAY, I get it. I have a solution for you: I’ve captured the most critical aspects of building bottom-up in a 40-minute Self-paced Course: Bootstrapping a Drinks Brand: Dead-Simple Strategies to Avoid 28 Costly Mistakes.
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Does this Guide resonate with you? Have you already implemented some of the aspects discussed above? Drop a comment and start the conversation 👇